How can I pass a data string to a programmatically loaded custom user control in C#

Question

I've written a Custom User Control which returns some user specific data. To load the Custom User Control I use the following line of code:

UserControl myUC = (UserControl).Load("~/customUserControl.ascx");

But how can I access string user inside the User Control myUC?

Answer 1

You will need to cast the loaded control to the actual type and use its public property:

MyUserControl myUCTyped = (MyUserControl)myUC;
myUCTyped.ThePublicProperty = "some value";

Answer 2

Suppose your custom user control's name is "MyUserControl"

Try this code:

MyUserControl myUC = (UserControl).Load("~/customUserControl.ascx") as MyUserControl;
string result = myUC.user;

Answer 3

Thanks, but how can you cast the User Control to the actual type?

Here's my Web Service code, which returns the user specific HTML generated via the user control.

Page page = new Page();
UserControl ctl = (UserControl)page.LoadControl("~/todo.ascx");
page.Controls.Add(ctl);
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
HttpContext.Current.Server.Execute(page, writer, false);

Now I only need to tell the user control who will see the output. But how can this be achieved?

Answer 4

Let's call your usercontrol "Bob"

If you Inherit from UserControl in Bob, then I guess it's safe to do this:

Bob b = (Bob).Load("~/customUserControl.ascx");

For the user part, I can't really follow what you want to do, is the "user" in the class were you create the "Bob" usercontrol and you want to set a property in the "Bob" usercontrol or is it the other way around?

For the first one you should create a property in your usercontrol.

class Bob : UserControl{
public string User { get; set;}
}

and then set it when after you create "Bob" instance.

b.User = theuser;

Answer 5

Thanks so far. My code is excactly the same as written above:

public partial class todo : System.Web.UI.UserControl
{
    private string mysecondteststring;
    public string setValue
    {
        get
        {
            return mysecondteststring;
        }
        set
        {
            mysecondteststring = value;
        }
    }
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        // my code
    }
}

But I'm not able to create an Instance of poll, in my Web Service code. Do I forget something?

--> Forgot to add the Reference to the .aspx Page, where the user control is loaded dynamically. It's working now with normal .aspx Pages. Example code can be found here

Does anyone of you know how user controls can be added in Web Services aswell, because the Reference Attribute isn't available there?